Monthly Archives: September 2015

Nevada casino gaming revenue falls for third straight month

Nevada casino revenue fell in August, as a strong slots showing wasn’t enough to overcome across the board declines in table game performance.

According to figures released Wednesday by the Nevada Gaming Control Board, statewide gaming revenue fell 1.4% to $908.2m in August, the third straight month of negative numbers. Casinos on the Las Vegas Strip let the decline, falling 4.7% to $527.4m. Through the first eight months of 2015, statewide revenue is up less than 1% while Strip revenue is down 1.9%.

Statewide slots win was up nearly 10% to $575.6m on a 6.58% hold. But table games were almost universally in the red, led by baccarat, which fell 25.1% to $127m despite a 14.3% hold. The situation was similarly bleak at the other top table earners, with blackjack down 15.5% to $87m, craps off 10.8% to $28.1m and roulette falling 17.7% to $25.5m.

Mini-baccarat broke the downward trend by rising a hefty 304% to $8.2m, although the improvement was based on comparison with a spectacularly bad August 2014, in which mini-baccarat reported a net loss of $4m on a negative 3.3% hold.

Hoosier Lottery offers free Powerball tickets for Wednesday's $301-million jackpot

You have a chance to win $301 million Wednesday without paying a cent! Hoosier Lottery officials will hand out free tickets for Wednesday night’s Powerball drawing. The ticket giveaway kicks off at 6 a.m. Wednesday at the Silver Express convenience store, located at 8328 west 10th Street.

SavingsAngel: The mistakes of broke lottery winners

Josh Elledge is chief executive “Angel” of SavingsAngel.com , a website that teaches consumers how to save money through a free money savings video eCourse and podcast . SavingsAngel also provides hundreds of 50 percent off or better deals each week to members by matching local grocery and drug store sales with its free database of over 5,000 accessible coupons.

City of Boston files new lawsuit to block Wynn casino

The City of Boston has opened a new front in its effort to halt the $1.7 billion casino planned for Everett, filing a lawsuit challenging the validity of a key certification that allows Wynn Resorts to begin construction. The new lawsuit shatters any notion of a compromise between Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh and billionaire casino mogul Steve Wynn, who had traded insults and accusations for months over the proposed casino on the Mystic River waterfront but have recently appeared to be finding common ground.

DraftKings CEO says less than 15 percent of his customers place sports bets

The relationship between regulated sports wagering and the booming daily fantasy sports industry, a widely debated subject, was explored but by no means settled at the Global Gaming Expo today. Jason Robins, the chief executive of major daily fantasy sports operator DraftKings, appeared on a well-attended panel at the conference and defended his company’s product as a skill-based game distinct from sports wagering.

NFLPA Goes Deep For Its Fantasy Play

NFLPA Goes Deep For Its Fantasy Play
@TheDailyPayoff

Less than six months ago, any mention of the NFL and official partnerships with any DFS company was brought with a deafening silence. Little to no official capacity existed with the bigger players, DraftKings and FanDuel, and no teams were actively engaged (albeit Kraft Sports group did have a stake in Boston-based DK). The response from the NFL continued to be wait and see.

Now as we head toward the fourth week of the NFL season, the field has changed, with big dollars flowing for all NFL properties, from teams and broadcast, now to players. As reported on numerous sites Tuesday, NFL Players Inc., the NFLPA’s marketing and licensing arm, has signed a group licensing partnership with DraftKings, which will allow some high-profile players to participate in the daily fantasy site’s marketing efforts. The agreement will allow DraftKings the right to employ active NFL players for in-product and promotional campaigns across print, social media, digital and mobile.

DraftKings VP/Business Development Jeremy Elbaum in a statement said, “To feature NFL players as part of our marketing efforts adds a level of excitement and connectivity to the game that is a huge win for us and our community.”

While neither side could point to an exact dollar amount, the deal is a landmark change in stance, another one, that will put added revenue directly to players who can be in uniform and be referenced in the promotions. The Patriots Ron Gronkowski is the first player on board, and certainly won’t be the last. The deal also shows the larger marketing spend now available to the NFLPA, as they left their previous partnership with smaller service DailyMVP to join DraftKings.

The deal also represents a continued football yin and yang, as a majority of the teams in the NFL have one year marketing deals with FanDuel, something which will may create even more confusion in the consumer marketplace as teams can be marketing one deal while players engage in a competitors product. It also will be an interesting test to see if the other Player’s Associations will also come on board, although at this point the NBAPA does not yet control player licensing rights like the NFLPA and the MLBPA has.

What is not confusing is that DFS and the NFL is front and center, and those one year” look and see” deals the NFL have imposed will be escalating as long as the dollars remain flowing.

Isai Scheinberg is the Moe Greene of online poker

When the shortlist for this year’s nominees for the Poker Hall of Fame was revealed earlier this month, PokerStars founder Isai Scheinberg’s name was nowhere to be found. For many, Hyman Roth’s impromptu eulogy of Greene in The Godfather Part II echoes Scheinberg’s dilemma: “This was a great man, a man of vision and guts. And there isn’t even a plaque, or a signpost or a statue of him in [Las Vegas].”

Caesars Entertainment controls the Hall of Fame, so it’s no surprise that Scheinberg failed to make the cut. Caesars has a longstanding feud with PokerStars, and while the animosity has thawed somewhat over the past year, Caesars interactive Entertainment CEO Mitch Garber recently told eGaming Review that Stars had “unfairly” grown its business by staying in the US market following the 2006 passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

Unfair or not, Scheinberg’s decision to keep Stars in the US market was the right business move, as Stars is now the unquestioned global market leader, while PartyPoker – which Garber used to oversee – has become a poker afterthought.

The poker world was surprised earlier this year when online affiliate PokerNews.com announced that it wouldn’t be handling live updates from the 2015 World Series of Poker. Word had it that Caesars had balked at PokerNews’ compensation demands but the decision may have had more to do with Caesars discovering that PokerNews had been acquired by Scheinberg.

College’s Reality; To Take Fantasy Or Not?

College’s Reality; To Take Fantasy Or Not?

A few weeks ago as the Daily fantasy business mushroomed with the start of football season, many were wondering if North America’s second-largest sports property, college football, would be prime for growth. Companies like DraftPot, a step below the behemoths FanDuel and DraftKings, were offering up games and looking to activate on college campuses to find ways to get more millennials involved on busy weekends, and why not pull in DFS college games at the bigger schools as well.

On the revenue side, the NCAA has been anti-fantasy, which did not stop small games from being launched using college data, but it did prohibit major schools with massive following from officially engaging in college-specific DFS. What it did NOT do was stop colleges from taking broadcast advertising revenue from the massive troves of DraftKings and FanDuel, who continue to mine the football and sports crazy world for more subscribers. Will all of that change?

At the annual meeting of the Division I Athletic Directors Association in Dallas on Tuesday, many NCAA leaders spent time discussing the legality of DFS and how to best handle a practice that the federal government deems legal, but the NCAA universally considers a threat to the integrity of college sports.

While NCAA bylaws prohibit any kind of fantasy engagement, a 2013 NCAA survey of student athletes found that 20 percent still participated in some kind of fantasy sports. The recent spend by DFS has raised more issues with college administrators, with Larry Scott, the Pac-12 Commissioner being the first to potentially say no on a conference level to the ad dollars coming in from DFS if that company offered college games in addition to tis advertised NFL, MLB and NBA products.

However while the rhetoric flies, only the SEC Network has actually pulled its daily fantasy ads, but even that move may not be more than window dressing. ESPN, which owns and operates the SEC Network, has a lucrative and exclusive deal with DraftKings and has been its most public ambassador of advertising, with a multitude of ads and multi-platform branding efforts.
There also is the question of revenue. While major conferences bask in the glow of College Football Championship money, those outside the big five need new streams of income, and DFS advertising dollars thus far have been too big, and too valuable to ignore for broadcast. Like other “vices,” beer for example, where there was a hard line once, the line is now blurred, and with the changing legal battle that line may also blur with college athletics and fantasy.

Integrity as a stance by the NCAA s one thing, whether the dollars can meld that integrity will be another.

Vegas, Quebec City make expansion pitches to NHL

The NHL expansion process has reached its final and most crucial phase, in which hopefuls met face to face with the league’s executive committee to make their respective pitches.

Hours before the board of governors meeting in New York, Quebec City, represented by Quebecor president & CEO Pierre Dion and vice chairman Brian Mulroney, and Las Vegas, led by investor Bill Foley, made detailed presentations to NHL’s executive committee, which comprised of NHL executives and several team owners. The pitches boiled down to the specifics of each group’s business plans, from how they will pay the expected $500m expansion fee to the ways they’ll manage and exploit possible revenue streams.

Foley, in his presentation, pointed the fact that Las Vegas has secured almost 14,000 deposits on season tickets; it has a $375 million, state-of-the-art arena that is on target to be completed by mid-April and will seat 17,500 for hockey; and the city’s economy is healthy and ready to support the NHL.

Las Vegas has been shunned by major league sports in the past because of the pervasive presence of gambling in the city and concerns about the local economy, a transient population and an extremely competitive market for the entertainment dollar.

Galaxy turns VIP area to premium mass gambling zone

In preparation to the Golden Week, Galaxy Entertainment has turned former David Group VIP area into a premium mass table gambling zone.

The new area, the Pavilion VIP Room, allows players with invitation or a platinum level membership in Galaxy’s Privilege Club—the second lowest tier of Galaxy’s four-level player reward program.

The Pavilion VIP Room, a cash play zone operated by the house not by a junket with a minimum bet ranging from HKD2,000 (US$258) to HKD10,000, would allow smoking in some places. Out of 41 tables, there are two no-smoking zones of six and seven tables.

“This area was earmarked before as a VIP area. That’s why we can continue operating as a smoking zone. I think the definition of VIP is not related to a rolling chip programme,” said Galaxy director for international premium, premium mass and mass market development Raymond Yap Yin Min.

SiGMA Gamification Conference: Top Speakers You Can’t Afford to Miss

The Gamification track at SiGMA 2015 will be held on 5 November at the InterContinental Conference Arena. This conference includes four presentations that will be held during the first half of Day 2 of the event.

Eight speakers will sit on a panel moderated by Justin Franssen, and share their knowledge and perspectives on current gamification topics being discussed in the iGaming industry, such as:

• Evolution of games in iGaming and the impact of gamification on remote gaming

• Emerging trends of in-play sports betting